


not quite valhalla

by iimpavid, It_MightBe_Love



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), The Illyrian Codices
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:27:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28434612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/It_MightBe_Love/pseuds/It_MightBe_Love
Summary: There are stories about ghosts in the desert. Nux doesn't expect to meet one.
Kudos: 1





	not quite valhalla

**Author's Note:**

> This is... very old... but I'm a sucker for nostalgia.

Nux’s convinced that he is not meant to go to Valhalla and that used to be such a sad thought but then he was hooked up to Bloodbag. The Imperator did Joe a betrayal. The gates were open to Nux four times and he never went through them; he rode with the mothers and the wives instead. They want more than to ride eternal, shiny, and chrome. And that isn’t a bad thing at all, no. Perhaps it will be good to ride with them for a while, to look for something other than death. Which is the thought that gets him to dredge his carcass out of the stinking dirt and metal that remain of the war rig and over the long road to the citadel.

* * *

A rider sees the explosion and waits. Her cycle is a sleek tan thing that blends into the sand. There’s a memory of another place, another desert where she was a child that makes the salt seem so tame in comparison. Or maybe it’s that she’s as crazy as the world is and nothing matters except the blades on her hips and the rig smoldering under rubble, rock and flesh. What’s left of Rictus (though who knows what the flesh was called before he died) gets taken apart piecemeal so she can preserve the useful, edible bits. She’ll take those back to her Brood. 

They call her Wraith. Which is silly because she's flesh and bone human like the rest. Long blonde hair, too long for reason in the wastes honestly, but she keeps it long out of principle and tradition, twisted and knotted, and braided so it doesn't get caught in anything.

* * *

Nux isn’t in the best shape. Larry and Barry-- there’s something of a deep, meaty divot in his shoulder and neck where they used to be and his blood is the reddest thing he’s seen. Redder than Capable’s hair or the insides of raiders. Swan diving through a windshield is a bad idea but it can’t be helped when a war rig rolls. No, it can’t. 

He has a moment of silence for Larry and Barry, decides that if he lives through this he’ll get some scars in honor of them, and sets about crawling out of the wreck. He might as well. Now the only thing that’ll do him in is the night fevers.

It’s painful, slow work, extracting himself. And his leg’s caught under-- he doesn’t actually recognize the hunk of metal, come to think of it. Just that it takes so long and hurts so much to move that he has to rest when he’s done, dizzy on the hot sand. Now is about the time a bloodbag might come in handy, he thinks, but not the madman. Opting for high octane crazy blood was not Nux’s shining moment of smarts.

He doesn’t see the lady at first, mostly because his right eye isn’t quite working right-- maybe swollen shut, he hopes, not gone-- and that’s the side she happens to be on. The smoke from the oil fire isn’t helping. When he does clap his good eye on her, he startles because that’s the Dag’s hair on her and he’s afraid they lost. Furiosa and Bloodbag failed and now there is absolutely no hope. “Oh no,” he tells her, reaching for her shoulder to point her away from the war rig, “you can’t-- Dag, you can’t stay here there might be more war boys--“ Which is about the time he realizes that the lady in front of him is not the Dag. She’s too dark for all her white hair, more like the Valkyrie.

Wraith figures the pale one, he looks all skin and bone like something from the proper wastes where she was a girl from, is not dead. Knucklebones to him then, except-- "I don't know who Dag is but I am not she." The tongue that people use in these parts is a little foreign. Foreign enough she struggles with it. Or maybe that's because her Brood never uses the common tongue. 

She sticks her hands on his face, too green eyes narrowing, "You're hurt. Sit." He hasn't attacked her yet, he might prove useful. Besides, fresh meat it always better than what she pulled from the ribcage of Rictus.

She’s chopping up Rictus like he’s a car and that’s something of a sight to see. Here Nux’d thought Rictus couldn’t die but it looks like the war rig blowing up is all it took. She sounds funny, like the Valkyrie, like the birds in the not-green place, and other things that he doesn’t have the fuel to think about.

“You’re not that Dag,” he parrots back at her and steps back. A part of him wants to run away because she isn’t from the Citadel and he is— and the Citadel doesn’t have many friends left any more. Only the one foot he’s half-dragging trips him up and with a yelp he he’s on the ground again and the world tilts sideways. He closes his eye. If the world’s going to lean like it’s busted an axel he doesn’t want to see it. (Are there any Black Thumbs who can fix the world? Angahrad said they’d killed it— they, the war boys, immortan joe, the people eater, the bullet farmer, and everyone else like them— so maybe there was nothing to fix and now everything was just going to be sideways forever.)

“I’m sitting,” he says, his eyes still closed. He wiggles the toes on his hurt leg— which makes it hurt worse. But he remembers the organic mechanic saying once that hurt was better than not feeling. Nux grits his teeth. “I think Larry and Barry ‘re too gone to help.”

There's blood on her hands. Not a lot, since she's the best at salvaging parts, but she licks the rest of the shiny red lifestuff away and squats beside him when he falls, "No. I am not. You would not be able to say my name. Not in your tongue. But I have heard your kind call me a Wraith." She snorts, smiles at him. All shiny white teeth and hauls a leather bag down beside them.

She prods his chest, "Hold still." 

“If you’re going to send me to valhalla, please don’t. I’m not ready to go anymore,” he says. He wonders, What’s a wraith? He used to know. Slit told him something once when they were pups about shadows faster than nitrous that peeled flesh from the bones of warboys during sandstorms, making short work of their cars and leaving nothing behind but bones when the winds died down. That was a wraith.

The lady, Wraith, she doesn’t kill him.

She does rearrange his bones, and that doesn’t feel nice. But he bears it because she told him to hold still and this doesn’t feel like she’s killing him. He’s got no reason to get up yet in that case. Still, he doesn’t like it. He likes her poking at his face less. “She’s easier than the organic mechanic though you shouldn’t complain,” he scolds himself.

If he was bleeding inside then she'd kill him quick and salvage his parts. If he was whole well - "You hurt your foot." She says and shifts to her knees ago splint it. The wind catches her hair, a few errant white blonde curls getting pulled too and fro. It isn't a bad break, probably from pulling himself free instead of trying to shift whatever had caught on it.

Her nose wrinkles, he'll be fine. Splint in place she turns to catch his jaw. With the sun coming down, her eyes seem to glow. One thumb touches the swollen eye carefully. Probing the skin and bone around it. Got clocked pretty hard by something.

"The Mother must have decided to bless you." She says quietly, and pulls a compress from a bladder in her bag and holds it to his eye, "Hold this here. It will burn cold but it will help. I need to finish collecting." Already she's decided to keep him. He reminds her of the youngest in her Brood. 

Nux cracks open his eye. The world is still tilting this way and that. She presses— something— against the eye that won’t work right and he clumsily reaches the hand he isn’t leaning on to hold it in place. “I don’t have a mother. There’s mother’s milk in the citadel. And Furiosa she’s from the Many Mothers. Or was. I don’t think most of them made it.” 

It’s worth watching the world do its somersaults to keep an eye on her. If she disappears it’s going to be a very sad day. “My name’s Nux,” he tells her, belatedly. “I’m a warboy. Or. I was.”

"I don't know what Valhalla is." She tells him, "But I would not eat your flesh to appease the ferryman so hold your peace with living." He's adorable. Sweet in a way she has not seen in the creatures from the rest of the world which is of course exactly why Uhura is going to roll her eyes. 

His bones rearranged and his face tended to she scuttles sideways across the sand without leaving a footprint, and begins piling bodies up again to take them apart. Bones. Ribcage, pelvis. Femur. She removes organs, testing them occasionally for purity, edibility. The Brood will feast well. Wherever these bags came from they were well-watered. 

Wraith moves quick enough to be a wraith. Maybe Slit was right. She pulls apart the dead things easily enough that she must be one. Only she said she wouldn’t eat him— maybe that’s because he isn’t a warboy any more after all and so the Wraith wants nothing to do with his meat.

"We all have a Mother." She says absently, "We come from her Womb, deep in the Waters." She pauses and turns to look at him seriously. Mouth drawn, "We do not have war boys, but you will be welcome regardless." She finishes her job and stands then, packing everything away in their appropriate bags and compartments. There's a little cart bolted to the side of her cycle and she glances at it and then Nux consideringly before, "Can you stand?" But she doesn't really pause to see, simply hefts him up with ease and guides him to the cycle and deposits him on it.

“There’s water at the Citadel, lots of it. I think it’s from underground. Is that what you mean?” He’s confused, but not afraid. Fear was so new, it should be shinier, but he’s happy not to feel it. He wants to ask her, “Could we go to the Citadel?” because it’s going to be a good place. Not yet but soon. The seedkeeper talked with Dag and Max about making it green, all of it. But Wraith is hoisting him upright on his unsteady legs, and he has to focus on not falling over on her. He thinks she could carry him— she’s all but doing that already— but it doesn’t seem right to make her if he can wobble his way toward her sidecar with less. He’s sweating by the time he gets his leg and the rest of him settled in and not from the heat. His hand is still holding the thing over his eye. It stings less and he can move that side of his face a little better. (Not that he much wants to.)

"There's water everywhere if you know how to find it." She tells him, thinking of the green places of home. It's a dozen or more days ride. And there are pockets where they can rest she thinks. She pats the carboy Nux a little to ensure he's comfortably situated and then straddles her cycle. The engine is a near silent purr.

“Where are we going?” Since its clear she doesn’t know the Citadel. Even his nitrous-scrambled brain can pick up on that. Maybe once his leg’s running again he can get back there on his own.

The boy doesn't ask too many questions. Which is good or bad. He looks half dead anyway. A few sittings in the waste might do him good. Or kill him. She suspects though, it might be to his betterment. Ostry is going to say something about Strays. She can feel it.

"Back to my Brood." She says, "You need more care than I have supply to give."

“Thank you,” he says. It’s the first time in his life he’s said those words. The Valkyrie told him to say it when someone was kind and this, he’s sure, is kindness beyond measure. Any other bandit would have left him. Or eaten him. (But what a nasty surprise they’d have gotten when they realized they’d eaten a half-life.)

Wraith’s bike is a quiet thing. It could be named wraith, too. He’s never known an engine so quiet and wheels so quick, and he’s been a black thumb building them his whole life. But then Immortan Joe preferred to bring the Doof Warrior with him into battle, with his flaming six-string, so its no surprise Nux never built or seen a quiet machine. This seems a smarter way to travel— it draws less attention. 

* * *

Somewhere between admiring the quiet of the desert and ignoring the pain in his everything, Nux falls asleep. (He knows he’s asleep because he opens his eyes to find himself standing in the Citadel, barely more than a pup. Slit is beside him. They’re going to get scarred today. This is the end of their training and the real start of their half-lives, they’ll be warboys after this, with every chance to die for the glory of Joe. Today, Nux gets his wheel.) When he wakes up, Wraith’s bike is still moving and his chest aches from remembering the organic’s knife. But the engine block carved into his skin has been healed over a long, long time, and that hurt goes away quicker than the one in his leg and head. 

He rights himself as best he can, lifting his head to get a look at where they are. It splits the skin of his neck and shoulder (Larry and Barry, may they ride eternal, shiny, and chrome) where the windshield had laid into him. The sun is setting, the sky clear of sand and firey. It takes him until the second try to find his voice (he would do anything for mother’s milk— his windpipe feels like it's cracking) and he says up at Wraith, “Are we close? To your brood?”

She smiles, he's such a queer boy. She knows they must look similar in age but Wraith is as old as the sands she thinks sometimes. There's a faint, sweet scent to his sweat when she lets herself linger on it. Like one of the Jezda. Not quite in the realm of the breathing anymore. But different. She didn't think anyone else had them, but then her people tended to stay away from the rest of the world and its menaces. 

Her bike is almost as quiet as the wind. Just the rumble hum purr of moving parts over sand. Wide wheels that kick up sand. Somewhere between midday and nightfall, Nux falls asleep. 

Night is always cooler in the salt. Which is nice, it is more temperate here than in the Citadel. (And boy will it be a surprise when she discovers that where Nux is from is called much the same) -- sometime, an age ago, they sank into the mother's womb again. It is the only reason her people survived. The peace and quiet is nice, but Nux' presence is a welcome distraction for all her sleeps. At some point, the compress falls from his face, and the bruising is almost completely gone. Good. He had innocent eyes.

She notices he wakes in that peripheral way she notices everything, glances at him as he shifts and speaks and she rolls her shoulders, "It is a twelve day or more ride on my cycle." She considers, "Your big machines would take thrice as long I think. But time... time is a funny thing in my head." She releases one grip on the handlebar and taps her temple, "Is hard to tell these days. Soon enough I think. There is turned water. In the bladder at your feet. Drink. It is sweet."

It takes him a long span to think through what she’s said. Twelve days’ ride. But “thrice that” in a rig— thrice, that’s three, he remembers dimly. Three twelves. That’s more than thirty. More than a month. They’ll be more than a month out from the Citadel— that’s farther than he’s ever been from anywhere. 

Capable looked so sad when he rolled the war rig and she probably thinks he’s dead. He thinks he’s dead. If from nothing else than all the blood that Larry and Barry took with them when they went. And now he’ll be a month’s ride away from Capable or more. That brings back the ache in his chest— until he realizes that Wraith said the word “water”. 

He scrambles to find it, pulling something in the back of his leg, another pain that’s barely important because there’s _water_ to be had. He drinks so fast he half chokes himself before he stops himself, coughing and not looking up at Wraith. “I’m sorry,” he says, on reflex, “It’s shameful, being addicted to it, I know.”

She watches his face fall and wonders if he has family back at his home. Resolves to bring him back once he's healed good and proper. Srogi will enjoy tending him. He bears marks of adulthood. Similar to her own, beneath the black armor she wears. 

His scrambling is probably going to injure him more, but she lets him. Water is scarce enough for surface dwellers, she waves a hand, "Drink your fill." Absent, "We are born craving water. It is what sustains us. There is nothing shameful in the desire for it." The bike slopes gently north-east and she begins to hum while dust and clouds begin forming overhead. 

"Cover your face with the mask at your feet." Travel by storm will be swifter anyhow.

All the same, Nux caps the bladder in favor of searching for the mask. There’s not a sandstorm that he can see— the one brewing should be a few hours off if it even gets big enough to be a problems— but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared and Wraith’s been true on everything else. He frowns at her. ““Do not become addicted to water— it will take hold of you and you will resent its absence”. Joe said that. It— it made a lot of sense, when he said it. … Are you sure?” 

She harrumphs, says again, "Drink your fill." But she isn't paying attention and so misses him capping the bladder off. She’s focused instead on calling the storm. The clouds gather more swiftly and lightning splits the sky and begins striking the sand around them. The bike lurches.

"And perhaps find something to hold tightly to." Hits the throttles and twists to tighten straps, guiding the cycle with one knee and patting Nux on the head one last time, "I don't know how a surface dweller will take to travel like this." She grins, and even while she's speaking that humming his rattling her chest.

The next lightning strike raises a vast hurricane of sand and plumes of flame.

He casts a look around the sidecar, finds what might pass as a handle on the inside and wraps his right hand tight around it. There’s a sandstorm where there wasn’t one before and once again Nux is reminded of Slit’s stories about wraiths. Lightning strikes the sand into a spray of jagged glass a few yards from his shaking sidecar and there’s no more doubt in his mind— wraiths are real, he’s traveling with one, and his heart is somehow still beating inside his chest.

Beating hard enough, too, that he thinks of accidentally swallowing nitro instead of breathing it into an engine. He can’t hear anything but the sandstorm, can only feel the world shaking, not going sideways so much as rearranging itself. It’s historic— like warring, like the fury road, and he turns to smile at Wraith, in spite of the mask. Nux is holding on hard enough he can’t feel his hands. Which is good, otherwise he’d probably throw them up and cheer for the storm. 

(Slit hated sandstorms. Nux could have worshipped them if the cult of V8 hadn’t gotten to him first.) 

She can smell the boy's excitement and exaltation. Which is enough that she might show off a little bit. It's been a very long time since the storms were anything but a faster way to travel. Of those left of her people maybe half a dozen are capable of it and none with so much power. But that is why she is Queen. The purest of her race and the youngest of the royal line.

The lightning strikes the car in an expanse of green and everything lights up. Skin coming alive in a spray of gold sparks and Wraith might howl like the wolves who are no more than shadow now in this half dead world.

Between one heartbeat of lightning and the next, they come out of the storm on the other side, in the midst of a cold, barren mountain range. She releases the throttle and hits the brakes hard enough they swing in a wide arc. Gravel and dirt spitting up as they spin once, twice, three times before coming to a stop. Wraith still laughing gleefully.

Nux pulls off his mask once they’re out of the sand, hooting and cheering Wraith on. For all the storm’s over, he still feels it prickling on his skin and shrieking in his ears. Probably something to do with getting struck by lightning. “What a day,” he announces to the stillness, “What a lovely day.” And he means it— he could have died this morning and he didn’t. What a thing to be happy about.

“You did that, Wraith?” He grins up at her, laughing. If he were in a position to reach up and give her a friendly shake, he would, but the distance between his sidecar and her shoulder is a bit much. “I knew you was a real wraith! Oh, shiny, too. No one’ll believe me, though. But I know.”

Wraith yanked her hair loose in a bid to shake dust and sand from it, still grinning manically, "An absolutely perfect day." She agreed and rolled her shoulders, before spinning on the seat to check Nux over. For a first timer, he was very well suited to storm travel.

She had heard stories of surface dwellers falling apart, sometimes literally, when traveling sideways as her kin do. 

"I did. There are too few of us left amongst my people who can. But we call up the storms whenever possible." An easy grin, "It's more simple when one is already risen of course, but I am not queen for nothing." A wink and she gestured out across the range to a gaping maw in the crevice of one mountain, "That is where we go. It will be perhaps an hours ride now."

“A queen?” He says it back at her, because he doesn’t know what that is and he wants to. There is so much that he does not know. Wraith has been full of surprises, all of them good and sparkling like the sun off metal. Then he spies the hole in the mountain. It’s nothing done by human hands— too big, even for crews as big as Joe had. “It’s like the Citadel,” he tells her, staring at it, “only larger and it can’t be smellt from here. Your brood is there? What’s it like?”

She nods, “Mm. I’m a leader of my people. That is a good meaning for “queen”.” The more she speaks the easier it is to speak in his tongue. She grins widely and kicks the engine back on, “We call it the Citadel.” And laughs, “Appropriate yes, and that is where my people are.” Different from her brood. These are not her waste sisters. She begins the trek across the rocky crags, pulling the cycle across gaps as they went. It was cold here. She always forgot the difference between the surface and the Below. “It will be warm.” A pause, “Hot moreso. Wet. You may have difficulty breathing.”

Nux nods. “Do you … lead many people?” He stares at her for a second while a few gears turn, and his face lights up, “Are they the Many Mothers? The old woman said they were all dead now, but.” He stops, because he doesn’t have a word for what this is— the want for the old woman to be wrong, to be able to stop Imperator Furiosa from screaming in pain that had nothing to do with being hurt. It was an awful thing, when Toast, Cheedo, Capable, and Dag realized there was no greenplace to be had, only stinking sick wet sand, hungry birds, and the salt. 

Wraith turns the cycle, throttles the engine, “Around three or four hundred at the Citadel.” She has to think, “More in outposts around the wastes. We rotate them out to keep blood fresh.” Her brows narrow because she’s never heard of the many mothers. “No. We are the Ichlowandians.” It comes out more like wind blowing and birdsong when she says it, “I am sorry.”

“Oh.” He’s crestfallen again but less, “It isn’t your fault. She said the ground was sick.” 

“The ground is sick. That is why the storms.” She gestured, “The best way to purge an ailment is to make it very, very hot.” In the meanwhile, her people dwindled slowly.

After a beat of silence that’s nothing but the quiet hum of Wraith’s bike, he says, because he does not want to stop talking on such a sad thing, “I think they would like you. I mean, the— ” and they aren’t wives any more, are they? he gropes for a better word— “the sisters would. All of them. Toast, especially. Cheedo might be a little afraid at first. Bloodbag— I don’t think he likes anyone but if he did he would like you. Furiosa, too.” 

They would be approaching the gates soon. She says, “Sisters? Well if you believe so. If you wish… once you are healed… I will return you to them?”

“Please!” He all but shouts it, the prospect is so exciting. Another word the Valkyrie told him about— good manners, she said, are important. They separate the humans from the bandits. “If— if you can.” 

She has to tell herself he must be a child for all his youthful exuberance. It's nice. "Of course. But first, you must be made better."

* * *

Wraith’s Citadel is as hot as she says. Nux can’t figure out what’s wrong with the air until he remembers she said it would be wet— “It’s full of water.” He reaches out in front of his face like he can grasp it. He expects to be able to, the air is so heavy. He can certainly taste it, cleaner than anything else.

She laughs a little when he realizes why, "Yes. It is." And she draws him deeper down, there is a lift, joined with the rock that her cycle is put on that lowers them deep, deep, deeper still into the Earth. The green growing denser as they descend.

The green stops him in his tracks. He’d seen food growing in short cropped rows, flesh rotting off bones, but neither one of these was this sort of green. “I didn’t know tree-things were so. Puffy.” He remembers Angharad again, screaming at him before throwing him from the war rig-- “We’re not to blame!” “Then who killed the world?”-- he might hear it in his sleep for the rest of his life. And suddenly he’s worried. He looks at Wraith, “Am I allowed to touch them? Will it hurt them?”

She thinks she might understand his pause, given her experience of the surface world and it's desolation. Instead she reaches down and plucks several blackberries from a bush and hands them to him, "Try them. You won't hurt them." They had brought back far worse, and anything that grew here was hardly going to be bothered by his clay coated skin.

Nux accepts what she hands him. They came from one of the shorter tree-things. He rolls one between his fingers— firm but squishable, full of purple if squished too much, and sweet-smelling. It’s harmless enough that he puts it in his mouth (if it kills him at least it will be something new and not the road) and makes a noise like a surprised vulture. It’s sweeter than any mother’s milk or bread or anything he’s ever tasted. 

“It’s good,” he says to Wraith, but he’s sure she already knows that. “Thank you.” Because this, too, is a kind thing. She didn’t have to feed him. 

He holds the berries carefully, eating them one at a time while they continue down-- where to he doesn’t know, but this place doesn’t seem dangerous. Guarded, but not likely to blow him to valhalla unless he does something stupid. Nux isn’t going to do anything stupid.

She wants to feed him other sweet things. They have plenty here. More than enough for everyone to eat their fill and then some. If his reaction is anything to go by he has had precious little, if any, kind of fruit in his life. Which is a shame.

Ostry greets them on the lowest level. Red glowing rocks lighting the halls, her teeth are filed into sharp points. Dark skin slick, and speckled with gold dust. Amber eyes narrow on them and she rolls her eyes, " _Really? We were taking bets on when you would bring yourself something home, we did not expect a child._ " Her voice rings through the air and when Wraith replies, the walls shake a little.

" _Can it. He was half dead when I found him._ "

" _And you kept him because?_ "

Wraith shrugs idly and glances at Nux and then says in English, "He's a boy."

The second lady has a less-friendly look about her, if only because she’s not speaking normal. Nux doesn’t know what it is she’s speaking, but it makes his greymatter feel wobbly and reminds him of the crooked bones in his leg. The pieces of it don’t feel right with all those voices going around. He tries to pay attention anyway, see if there’s anything he can pick up.

“A warboy,” he adds, when Wraith says something he understands. He isn’t a warboy any more, not really, but the way Wraith said it made him sound like a pup— and he isn’t _that_. Hasn’t been for six years.

Ostry sniffs, "He needs a wash. Warboy. Is that a name?"

Wraith shakes her head, "He is called Nux. I think Warboy is a designation." A lift of one shoulder, "He needs the jezda miritari first. His leg." She pointed at the splint and Uhura squinted.

"You did a piss poor job of that."

"I was not taught to heal people."

Ostry’s grin is all sharp teeth, "No, my Queen. You were not. Come then _Nux_ \-- we will take you to our miritari and then it is to the washing chamber with you. You smell of fouled earth."

His head snaps to look at Wraith, just for a moment, because he doesn’t know this new person and she— she looks like the sort of wraith who might eat him alive. (But there isn't a sandstorm around, not in here, so he can’t be in too much danger can he?)

“Your meer-it-tar-ee— is that your organic mechanic? ‘Cause then you’re right I do need one of those. Not that Wraith’s bad at it, I mean.” He doesn’t move, not yet. The thrill of the storm and the sweet things wore off a little while ago and he can’t help but be wary.

“Ostry. Be kind.” She says sternly and turns to Nux, “I do not know this organic mechanic. It once was in your tongue what were called healers?” She glanced at Ostry for confirmation. A nod. “She- Ostry is my second in command.” A pause, “She won’t hurt you.”

Nux accepts her reassurance with a nod. He tells Ostry, tall and strong and unfamiliar, “You’ve got awfully pointy teeth.” He follows her, favoring his broken leg heavily. It isn’t good to walk on it, he remembers because Slit broke his leg once when they were pups, but there’s nothing for it now and he’s almost at a mechanic anyway. “There’s a war band in the southwest that does that— wicked lot. They’ve got a lot of rollin’ bugs with spiked cages. Sick as the rest of us, though. You could probably break one of them in two.”


End file.
